


The Tale of Indifference

by his-spare-hats (JesterFesta)



Series: Tales that remained untold [8]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gil and Ardyn are sad, Gilgardyn, I rewrote this about 3 times, M/M, The Astrals Suck, but it's hard so it's confusing, multiple personalities if you will, taelpar crag, trying to explain evil ardyn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 14:13:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16243298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JesterFesta/pseuds/his-spare-hats
Summary: Ardyn goes to visit Gilgamesh at Taelpar Crag but Gil soon finds out that Ardyn is not alone behind those amber eyes.





	The Tale of Indifference

**Author's Note:**

> This is something I wrote for Gilgardyn week 2018 (Day 2) and it was really hard to write so I just hope it's understandable *eyes emoji*   
> Feel free to ask questions in the comments! or hit me up on tumblr @his-spare-hats

It had been years. Years of Gilgamesh standing where he always stood, day in and day out. Taelpar Crag. He didn't know why of all places it had to be _that_ one but there were many things he didn't know anymore. He didn't know anything but numbers.

Two thousand years.

A thousand four hundred and ninety-two challengers.

There wasn't much more left for him. He took a look around, let his eyes wander across the various blades slammed into the ground. Beautiful ones, functionally simple ones, those wielded by noble men and those wielded by thieves. Sometimes telling them apart was more difficult than one might suggest but they all had one thing in common. They were unworthy.

Gilgamesh couldn't remember why it started but they challenged him, called him the Blademaster. Called their duel a trial like he was some sort of judge and at some point he just went with it. He was now the Blademaster, conducting the Trial of Gilgamesh and all he got from it was the blades of those who dared to face him. He had long forgotten what he had collected them for.

“What a splendid collection you have here!” A voice, light and carefree echoed from the stones around him. A voice so painfully familiar that it had Gilgamesh halt his breath. “Are these for my armiger? No no, wait, don't say anything. I'll take them anyway.”

The Blademaster turned, slowly and with wide eyes, turned towards the source of the voice to see a person wrapped in a dark coat. A pair of boots, a scarf, gray and flowery and, as his eyes moved further upwards, hair of the color of Ulwaat berries peeking out from under a black hat. It couldn't be but then why would he draw his hat with such determination? Bow in a mocking way only he had mastered? Smirk in a way only he could?

“Hello, Gilgamesh.”

A bitter undertone – spite in his voice after years of hiding himself from Gilgamesh's eyes when all the other had done was leave him behind like he had been told to. He had wished for him to do so as if he had known his Shield would wait. Forever, if he had to.

Gilgamesh knelt before him, bowed his head feeling it was wrong to face his master head-on. “Ardyn, my...I-...I-” All these years and he still did not manage to bring out a single word. Apologies. Shouts of glee. Relief. Disbelief. Too much filled his head, he tried to put it in order-

But, as always, Ardyn would be the first to finish a sentence.

“Now, we did not raise you to be a sycophant, Shield.”

Cold. Cold and foreign. Gilgamesh finally raised his eyes, searching those of a man who seemingly was no more. Warm color like before but there was something about Ardyn's eyes that caused shivers to shake his body. He was not the same. He was the thing that had fled from the dungeons that long long forgotten night.

_A monster will go around._

Ardyn pulled a sword out of the ground, examined it with a raised brow. It was an old blade from the times of Solheim – it must have been that of one of his first challengers – with intricate designs making it so valuable a dealer of rare objects would pay a fortune to even just hold it once. To Gilgamesh it was but a chunk of metal and wood.

“A splendid little collection indeed”, the monster mumbled more to itself but Gilgamesh could not remain silent any longer, seeing nothing but his old friend. The Healer.

“You can have them all.”

It was a hasty whisper, impatient like he couldn't wait any longer. He had waited for so long. One thousand four hundred and ninety-two swords all gifted to Ardyn Lucis Caelum but said man would not have it, dropping the old Solheim blade to stride towards another, still shiny one. It had been seven years ago, Gilgamesh remembered. The newest part of his collection.

Ardyns face twisted in disgust. “It reeks of the crystal.”

“It belonged to a young man in royal garb. Not the first and most likely not the last either.” Gilgamesh wanted to rise to his feet but then changed his mind to not upset Ardyn. He didn't know if he could upset him or it was just his imagination. Or was it the monster he was talking to? Two thousand years apart had changed the way they acted around each other, apparently. It was sad.

“Royal garb, you say?” The visitor turned to glance at the Blademaster with a scowl and for a moment it seemed like he was about to get angry, mad even, but then the scowl melted into a displeased pout, eyes curious like they used to be then. “They changed the uniforms a couple of years ago, I don't like the design. Very black yet they don't know darkness.” It had to be the darkness that had changed him. Years and years of hiding from the light of the crystal, so it appeared. But Gilgamesh now felt like under that sinister expression he could see a bit of the Ardyn he had known.

He remembered how often Ardyn had talked of the indifference of the universe and a presence there at night as well as when he had been in the process of healing somebody that was at least as indifferent. The Healer had believed it was something not originally from their world, maybe the creators of the universe themselves!...And Gilgamesh had nodded as if he understood then. It was more than just some sickness hanging around certain people. But back then he didn't think the universe was indifferent in exactly the same way the monster his Healer had become was.

It did seem like he was still there, the Healer. Deep down there. Gilgamesh was about to relax when Ardyn put out his hand and something appeared – a book, small and old.

The Shield recalled standing by the sea and looking to Angelgard on distant shore. The very same book in his hands, two millennia ago. Ardyn had been right, a monster had gone round their city. A daemon. A curse. A brutal creature. Indifferent doom. He had heard it all. Heard all those people talk. But not one spoke of the Healer. And so Gilgamesh and him alone had taken it into his hands to pass the story on, written a book only to deliver it to his closest friend. Eyes set on the peculiar island he had taken one last breath before the book had dissolved into nothing but pink particles flying off into the distance. _Don't forget who you were,_ he had said then.

And it seemed like Ardyn had received the gift.

“The stories of a Healer”, Ardyn read the title out loud with a scowl. “There's a lot of little stories in here, one can give you credit for your elaborate choice of words. They touched a little heart to the core.”

Gilgamesh did not understand why the words just didn't match with how Ardyn held himself; displeased and hostile. But he understood the words themselves and was about to smile behind his iron mask. “I am glad-”

“-Is what your Healer would say if his heart was still the same as then”, the monster interrupted him with a dry laugh. “Healing and raising a chocobo? Nothing but some mutation of a bird? Flowers that would never wither? Don't make us laugh, Gilgamesh.” There it was again. The cold voice. His full name. Gilgamesh got scared listening to it. Afraid of what his friend, his Healer had become. “There is no flower that never withers. Just like there never was a Healer.”

The book was thrown to his feet but Gilgamesh was quick to pick it up from the dusty ground, pressing it to his chest. The book was the only thing reminding him of those happier times he had longed for for two millennia. It was everything good in his life, the sole proof that he had been happy once, so long ago. And the monster had thrown it to his feet like it was nothing, a bitter taste forming in Gilgamesh's mouth. “Yet you kept the scarf I gifted to my Healer then.”

He opened the book and found the pressed flower, brown and crusty, but it was still that very flower. He felt like crying when a deep sigh and a mumble reached the former Shield's ears.

“Knowing that there is no cure for my curse doesn't mean I stopped hoping.” Warmer. Weaker...It was Ardyn. Had to be him and not the monster. Gilgamesh got to his feet, dropped the book and grabbed the other's arm to make him look at him. The amber eyes were sad and hurt, begging for something Gilgamesh could not give him. “Gil, please, don't look at me like- like...”

“How am I looking at you, Ardyn?”

“Like you know something you can't know anything about.” The eyes narrowed, back to masking the emotions hidden inside again. It was then that Gilgamesh understood. That Ardyn was still fighting the monster though he knew he could never win. “We're all tired of this world, aren't we?”

Gilgamesh watched as the black markings appeared, like tears running down Ardyn's face, like dark circles around his eyes, like the curse he had seen so often during their journeys through the country. It was the face of the monster Ardyn had only shown to Gilgamesh until that fateful day at the citadel. The monster he had been able to keep inside for so long until he could not take any more. It was devouring him from the inside trying to get rid of him but he was still fighting. All this time and the flower still hadn't withered.

Gilgamesh stroke the other's cheek with his thumb, unable to smudge the black tears of the scourge, then sighed. “Then maybe it is time to go to sleep.”

“No, not yet. He is still not...The Chosen still hasn't been born, Shield. He is nigh but there is still some time left. A blink in the eye of those who lived for centuries and longer.”

“You could end it earlier”, he whispered into the monster's face. “We could just go and sleep, what use is it waiting for some chosen-”

“The Ardyn you want is no longer, Gil. Don't you see?” He gestured at himself, very much like that time in the dungeon when he had told him that it was all a part of him. Before the monster had been unleashed and swallowed him whole. “They are the parasite I can't get rid of.”

“They?” He was confused, did not quite grasp what Ardyn was trying to tell him in between the utterances of the monster. It was his Ardyn, the one he wanted, no matter what he said.

Ardyn withdrew from his touch, shaking his head with fear in his eyes. “I am a puppet in their plan and so are you. I-” He hissed, quietly, holding his head as if it could make the pain go away and the eyes hardened again. “We will let the Chosen finish what could not be tamed by our ring alone.”

Gilgamesh watched the figure of Ardyn retreat slowly, actual tears joining the dark ones of the scourge. Like untainted light and indifferent darkness joining on the same face.

Indifferent like the universe. And those who had created it. _They._ Indifferent like them.

A glimmer of understanding appeared in Gilgamesh as he examined the fingers clutching at a scarf with flower pattern like it was the only thing that could ground him. Like there was nothing else Ardyn could hold on to but this one memory. _There is no flower that never withers._ He didn't know when he had started walking towards the monster, no, the other half inside that body. Picked up pace. Started running. Threw his arms around the broad shoulders and buried his face in purplish-red locks of unknown familiarity.

“Alright, you hear me, right you monster? We'll play that game. We will wait for the Chosen to defy you and then we will rest. Ardyn, promise me we will rest, yes? And the monster had better not forget that there is good in you.” All this time he had done him wrong. “I don't care if they are indifferent, you deserve pity and happiness and luck and release. You deserve everything they took from you with just some ring.”

A soft gasp escaped Ardyn's lips as his fingers dug into the heavy armor, finding a way around it to be in contact with fabric, warm and soft fabric. “I wanted to be happy. Just wanted to...to be.” They stood like that for who knows how long, Ardyn trying to get a grip but failing again and again, sobbing uncontrollably. “Why did I have to be the victim of their indifference?”

“It's because they are the monster, not you”, Gilgamesh whispered quietly breathing in the scent of his Healer one more time. “And a monster does not understand the virtues of the likes of us. It- It has never been you from the start, right? Not you, not the sickness – that monster.”

The sobbing subsided and Gilgamesh knew the time to say good bye had come, releasing the body of the Healer from his hold to face the monster head on. They looked at him from hard eyes. “We just need to wait for the Chosen to erase the mistakes that were made. Every other thought is superfluous.”

He wondered how it had never occurred to him what the actual situation had been all this time. He felt foolish to think praying could have helped his friend fight the monster inside when it only strengthened them. Gilgamesh watched the Healer go overshadowed by something far greater than feared. Something they would not have dared to accuse when it all started. It had been a game ever since then.

He didn't watch a corrupted Ardyn go with a monster by his side.

He watched a Healer in chains, dragged along by his beliefs and a slave to the monster that was the Astrals speaking through him. On and on until the game they had started would finally come to an end.

On and on until there was nothing left of the board they had played their games on.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, this is about the Astrals being the monster living inside Ardyn. The Astrals and Ardyn's belief and trust in them form his corrupted scourge form, well, we all know how well that went. It's about the Gods toying with the lives and beliefs of those inferior until they slip up and everything is a mess the Gods couldn't be more indifferent about.  
> Thanks for reading and I hope everything was more or less understandable /sweats/


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